


Harm and Boon

by SouthernBird



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Canon Genderbending, F/F, F/M, Implied Violence, No editing-- we ride at dawn, Pining, Post Zero Sealing, Pre Elf Wars, Robots, Signas and X use She/Her, Technobabble, Unrequited Zero/X if you look, War talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26714365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: “Commander,” and that grin that is creasing all of X's features so beautifully singes Signas in all the ways she nearly forgot, “request to take you from your post?”
Relationships: Signas/X (Rockman), X/Zero (Rockman)
Kudos: 6





	Harm and Boon

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to fellow Signas fans for tempting me into writing She/Her Signas/X. 
> 
> Also, please forgive any major instances of confusion. I once again wrote a large fic on my phone.

It is raining again. 

The world is a dreary epitaph, grieving for the glorious sun that has seemed to abandon her to the gusting wolves and thundering hawks. Instead of her vibrant neons that flutter in welcome to patrons alike, instead of her whimsical galavant of song and dance while the populous flock from bar to club to cafe, the world sighs alas at her loneliness and beseeches misery once more. 

The alkaloid coffee is bitter on her tongue, but she sips it nonetheless and savors it best she can as though the warmth will bade away the draping funeral stench from his shoulders. It has been a few years already as time, ever the lofty mistress, struts and sashays to her utter delight down the road towards her endless goal. Time never stops, not for any war, not for happy occasion, and certainly not for heaving loss. 

More so, time prances all the more away from loss, giggling in acrid coos as she goes right away in a rustle of bustles and skirts. She is careless for the lashes that are deep and throbbing, all wounds that time should heal and yet, the scabbing does more or less the same. 

Signas has let her marks scab over far earlier than the rest than her soldiers for progress is her necessity and no general or colonel or commander has the sake of regret for long. No, they are all listless candor that constructs a foundation for those with the privilege to mourn, all stern yet understanding frowns and tight yet steady fists. She is one of the thresholds of authority to keep the stillness, to instill morale, to show that she is soldered together with binds of iron and fire and cast stronger for it. 

A sip, and her coffee is gloriously bitter, nearly citrus sharp on her tongue like a fresh lemon plucked from a summer tree. The first taste is a soothing balm, and the second is acid and salt in her wounds, all ocean brine gritting in the scars she hides behind her solemn visage. 

Her eyes close, then open, blues that would reflect a sky full of promise of some better tomorrow meeting the gray rolls of rain clouds and hope fades into a silent death. Pity, but that is the surety of life; when life’s resplendent jubilee is so sorely needed, it’s gone, dead, now some dilapidated corpse of some sentiment that meant more to an individual than to the world. 

Her calendar beeps, the noise an utterly annoying symphony amongst the pitter and the patter of rain droplets against her office window. Duty calls, and is she not at least the dutiful commander to greet her responsibilities with the arms of a would-be martyr that is too cowardly of the fray and instead sends good men to die in her stead? Or, perhaps instead, they simply _go to sleep_ , eyes closed to the detriment that they leave when the earth— her earth— cries agony at the loss of fleeting comfort? 

A knock at the door, and Signas widens her shoulders and smooths the brow on her face; she is a commander once more, her shell of worry cast aside like a crown of thorns. She is proud, an eagle, able to soar when all else lies in ruinous instability. 

“The door is open,” is all she calls out, walking to her desk to slide out the chair to heave her larger form down while the tell-all sound of the door hissing open is all she needs. Her demeanor is ever impassive, but at the sight of her visitor, her processors whir into overdrive and she nearly overheats.

If only courage could rally forth its gilded armaments and its plum war banners on this day that X has come to see the Commander, then perhaps Signas would not have had weakness permeate her entire frame to leave her helpless.

It has been years since that day in her office, years since she truly understood the mistrust that X held in her heart for her superiors and her comrades, years since there was a hope for forgiveness. Signas has kept her distance and lo, has her core never dragged behind her boots so gratingly painful before. Her eyes, hawk-like and tired from the endless hours that span into attacks new and old, observe X as the ever present savior off and on the field. 

A pining heart savors each time X’s voice crackles to life over the feeds, and Signas is aptly sure she seals her lips while the Navigators do their job unless addressed directly. The lack of communication is hardly from Signas' guilt at holding Zero's confidence to her chest, but rather to let X control her life in ways perhaps had never been allowed before. Each request for any supplies, time off, and additional hands have been met with not one hint of rejection as the Commander has deemed any request from the Blue Bomber as succinctly essential to an antiviral development. 

Still, there is always room for a bit of gossip, and Alia has expressed her concerns time and time again, offering Signas a little gift of fresh alkaloid coffee every morning before her team takes over. Even with Alia's elite, all with a dream of some wayward cause, the Command Center feels emptier with each day that ekes by and yet, the Commander still counts the same number of bodies as the days prior. 

X's furthering absence does not quell her desires and affections any more than outright rejection could, so the shock of it all comes when there is an abrupt shuffling through the east wing door and X is right before her post over the Navigators. 

“Commander,” and that grin that is creasing all of X's features so beautifully singes Signas in all the ways she nearly forgot, “request to take you from your post?” 

If X is the boon, Signas is the harm, a knife that she whets with every breath X dares take. But, save her, Signas loves, loves so desperately, loves like starlight along the shoreline, loves like fire caressing a nighttime veil. Her grandest sight could sit before her, curse her, bite into her pride and rip it out with ivory teeth and she would know that she deserved it. 

As a leader, she led the other astray. As a commander, she commanded X’s ignorance, and as her comrade, Signas has hung her head and gone mute. 

Signas has failed this savior of all, having never told her the truth until the clock chimed midnight at the magic of illusion faded. She never let the Hunter even have some smidgeon of a hint of the events that would fall after these wars, each day cascading into deeper depths of muted chaos. 

Axl is gone, and in his steps to that cybernetic afterlife where his soul might know some bittersweet taste of true freedom, Zero has walked in step, sleeping away in void and in bliss while the universe outside his makeshift coffin burns and burns and burns. 

And, if she could find the words to say, string together some hapless residency that would purvey her side, that would defend her, why should she attempt it? Even so, she commands X, holds authority over her, stands tall above her as though she is some small nuance to her existence. Mutiny from X would hardly be a chore for her, but she wants to be trusted, wants those eyes upon her, all her summer greens that are so dull that commander nearly withers at the revelation. 

The Commander is strong; she has walked through hellfire and heaven sent and lived to tell the tales of her deeds and her visions. Thus, her lips part to tell her subordinate her commands, no, her pleas—. 

“I think I get it though.” 

As always, X steals her the air from her vents, leaving her speechless at her lovelorn beauty that fractures a little more with each flailing sunset. 

“Well… I guess this really isn’t helping us with either of our days,” X proceeds lightly, topic changing with an awkward shift of her shoulders, “but I would at least like to show you the progress we’ve already made. Might I request your presence…?” 

Signas, still tongue-tied and lovesick, agrees with only a cursory nod and a rise of her hulking form. She can do this much, can provide this much, can give unbridled support and approval so that success is all but at least possible. The trek to the high-level elevators is a silent one, likened to the steps towards towering gallows only to meet a ghoulish executioner smacking his maws to snap necks and to leave the corpses to rot in twisted effigy of primordial judgement. All of Signas’ candor loses its flame at the thought of dead eyes left open, seeing the world catalyze into facades of itself for all the sakes of progress. 

As sure as the axe cleaving through a throat, the elevators doors close in soft finality, leaving them with all their myriads of guilt. Signas tries to not revel in her own seeping convictions, tries not to divulge in some soul searching in that carrier that goes down, down, down towards the center of a once moribund earth. She could fuss about it, be more a listless shadow of herself for it, but instead, her eyes gaze over at X to discern her. 

Just from a glance, if there could ever be one thing that Signas is grateful for, it is seeing a hint of something delicate along X’s face as it reveals that war is not the most burdensome death that smothers and suffocates all that is gentle. There is still something breakable in those eyes, those emeralds that are crystalline in their brilliance though the tinges of belligerency are minuscule cracks along the edges. While those emerald eyes stare straight ahead, hands fidgets, a nervous tick that the Commander has only truly observed in X’s demeanor; fingers pull at another, tugging, nearly pulling knuckles out of sockets which would be useless to do. Regardless of how meaningless it seems, it reminds Signas that X is nearly as human as their creators, truly a gift that has built the bridge between species only for her exploits to be smashed into dust time and time again. 

It is a while more until X inhales, then exhales, eyeing her commander down with a hesitancy that is like seeing a snake poised back and eager to strike, “I would have stopped him. That was the problem, right? That’s why no one could tell me.” 

_Because we lost so much_ , goes unsaid; _because_ I _had l_ _ost so very much_ _already_ , lingers like dust motes that twirl along the unforgiving breeze of oxygen sighing through the vents. Funny how the room seems colder, like something wet and icy has settled like a late frost over her armor, but Signas’ thermometers indicate that nothing has changed. All her systems are steady, static, but the roar fills her aural sensors as though hearing would be a little death suffered over and over. 

Those eyes, once so hopeful and bright, sadden more, but the smile is what makes Signas want to bleed out until some warmth covers her knuckles and stains this earth with her regrets. 

“You don’t need to tell me, Commander… I figured that out already,” X placates, easing back into her chair and her exhaustion is so prevalent and obvious. It was already enough to keep Zero’s secrets, but that tiny little heartbreak just gashes the leader open further, a chasm of something festering and rotting inking ever deeper into her core. 

Had she the authority, Signas would force an emergency reactivation and beat the red bastard to every inch she could manage. She would scream until her chords fritz, would shake with all the obscenities and curses that have rattled like steel shavings in her head since he walked right through the door years ago, fresh off the field during the Nightmare Incident. Her distrust had been amplified by his willingness to go back, never to undergo diagnostics because X was a miracle, but Zero was nothing more than a damn omen.

Her programs simmer, but coordinate her transgressions to the recesses of a storage board while her fingers tense around her arm rests. For all her freedoms, for all of the promises of free will, a funny little failsafe prevents her of furor and she is all the more angered by her lack of capability to go wild. 

Signas cannot recall a time where she felt the unbridled furor of passion, cannot fathom some time when her CPU would work so fervently that she would scream at the top of her voice box, shrill and panicked and emotionally combustable. Her build lacks the ability, or, no, she herself disallows the privilege. She must prevail over all circumstances; she is, after all, the Commander of soldiers, of reploids at arms that raise buster and saber and head for the sake of peace. 

So, here they are, leader and soldier, somewhat novel and quite ancient, in some type of standoff no manual or battle schematic could aid Signas in. X is, in all rights, an enigma, a puzzle that she has conceived to be unbreakable to all but one bastard that hold his secrets locked away levels below, just right above brimstone and fire. While reploids are not inherently some kind of praying type, the Commander, in all her prideful whims, prays that she has the chance decades from then to at least ask for the key in piecing X together. 

It would be for naught, as the withering is so evident on X’s _soul_ that is nearly too unbearable to witness. But— “I wish I could tell you different.” 

And, she can’t. 

“That’s fine,” X lies, eyes closing to stave on some swell of something that she swallows right back down with an army effort, “I… That’s just fine.” 

X trails off and all about her feels lost: her eyes search the room, look every which way while her mental bearings seem to skitter off down some rabbit hole trail that glooms with crumbling peonies and thriving bellwort. Surely they would not guide her down further down with melancholy sway, not carry her to some promise whispered on friable petals, yet she more Signas sits there, the risk of this revered savior becoming irrecoverable heightens. 

“X, I’m—.” 

“ _Don’t._ ”

Lips that have captivated Signas’ darker fantasies rub and clench together as though X is grievingly withholding an ululation that would shake her to her very bolts before her mouth smooths over. There nothing there to perceive how any further reaction would be met, but Signas wants to try, wants to curse her disposition, wants to rip and to claw away at every damn sense of duty and valor that she has eagerly supped away at for the sake of validity. She would do it— damn it all, she would cast away her armor, cast alway the glory that upholds her to the ranks if it only meant she would not have to endure the numbness that overtakes the one person she would die for. 

“Sorry,” X relents after a pregnant pause that nearly shreds the other’s cellophane nerves into cascading oblivion, “I just—I guess I’m still not in the best headspace yet.” 

X is still going blindly into a darkness that she has faced before, but not when she was tumbled into the depths by war’s vile fate and she must rise above the currents to breathe. No, this time it is by volition, a sleeping death willingly walked into rather than by an act of conflict that would wreck the foundations of a perilous future. No, this is dark and quiet, lacking in every sense the vigor that comes with the usual circumstances. 

Signas wants to look away, wants to give X this fleetingly minuscule segment of privacy, but resolves in her heart that she must not. 

After eons and eons of tension that settles upon every ounce of metal around them, the elevator finally slides to a stop and opens, revealing the laboratories that were transported to Headquarters once Zero was deemed too high risk to be just anywhere about in the world. It would not only keep him under higher surveillance by the best the Hunters had to offer, but X would have more of a hand in the daily grind of researching antibodies while being close to her partner. It would all be in the hopes that X would stay sane, stay positive, still rally forth her whims for some betterment for tomorrow that she has always dreamed aloud in wonderment of the possibility. 

As they walk the catwalk towards the inner laboratories, her Hunter hardly seems like some naive android who imagined fields of flowers where human and reploid alike would dance hand in hand, would twirl about in synchronicity while springtime sung her lullabies to golden breezes. No, X’s gait, her posture— these are signs that the naïveté that has draped down her back in a kindly protective veil has been torn away to reveal someone far more cynical and hardened. 

There is an age to X, a bitter wisdom that seems to burgeon with every click of her boots towards the beckoning gleam of the last security hindrance, a door with a three-phase encryption that the Blue Bomber inputs with tired ease. The movements all seem played out, over practiced and overdone, and Signas wonders just truly how many times the other has found herself at the threshold of this sterile mausoleum. Warmth has no home here as the pipes and wires comprise a steel tomb bathed in cold vapid light, and again Signas finds herself questioning her internal thermostats. 

In blatant interruption, there is a bland chime that greets them, industrial-grade hitches groaning with effort to unlock the door before it rolls open under the sheer weight of its burdensome purpose. A hint of an icy foreboding creeps up Signas’ spine, but X seems nonplussed by it all— then again, surely by now, X is more familiar with all the creaks and groans of this dismal labyrinth of a laboratory than she could ever desire to. 

Every bit of it is eerie, and not one decorum of Zero’s temporary resting place has any sort of life to it. Despite the color splashed here and there with monitors, pipes, and wires, it all blurs into a monochrome haunt that washes away the joy that immerses the earth above now that the world draws closer to repair each day. The earth may never heal into the flourishing awnings and the halcyon days of utopia, may never arise from the rubble of wars like a phoenix grand to enflame the foundations of Elysium to blessed splendor, but just along the zenith, close enough. 

Signas could live with a stateliness just short of peace if it meant being less one crimson-hued demon of an android prowling the lands, but those dreams are low hanging fruit only simple yearners pluck from fate’s tree. Fate, of course, has brought her there to watch X scurry over to the capsule that drowns in wires and monitors, the azure hunter’s smile reflecting along the glass that encases this sleeping beast. 

Something jealous threatens to bubble over, horrible tar boiling thick at the bottom of her core, all vile and putrid and willing to let this all go. No, some sinister, pleading facet of her usual impassive disposition dips itself into that tar before sinking right now, and it takes so much vitriol raked against her own selfish caprices to settle back into her usual attitude. Zero, however much pain he has caused, has been nothing short of the emblematic soldier as no task was too grandiose to take on. 

Yet, exemplary he may be, he is quite ineffectual where he sleeps, but X’s exuberance writes another story, plain and simple. 

“I guess I should finally relay my purpose in bringing you down here,” the smaller android relays as she turns back, hands clasped formally behind her back respectfully, “but to be honest, I am still shocked by it myself.” 

Signas nods, cutting her eyes away from the one man who could crumble the world without even a morsel of effort. “Go on.” 

X hums, lips pressed together as though if she spoke, words would flutter about and float away, all wings and feathers and freedoms that she cannot incapacitate without pressing key into lock and opening the door. 

The Hunter falls quiet, pensive even, her lips pursed together in some tight line that Signas hungers to change; to allow a frown on a face that subliminal should be a sin worthy of dire punishment. 

Yet, X gives up her turbulent thoughts it seems, glancing up to her Commander with something akin to humor glimmering amongst the storm clouds of anxiety. Signas feels a pang, something dull that thuds in her breastplate like a birds feathers hitting at its cage in plea for freedoms air. 

“I think I come down here a little too often. I know I’m authorized to aid the scientist since they’ve determined Zero’s build has many components similar to mine, but… maybe I impeded progress. This discovery might have been made sooner.” 

“Your time here is just as important as manning the ranks during a Maverick attack,” Signas replies with all the cadence of an autopilot's monotone cordiality, “and permitting any and all requests to help the research team is the least I can do after your years of dutiful service.”

“Dutiful service,” X scoffs at the gesture, but there is far more exhaustion than derision laced in her words, “more like playing war hero on a scrap heap of innocent reploids.” 

X stops, reprimanding herself with a short shake of her head, “but that isn’t what this is about. This is… I want to apologize.” 

To consider that the Commander is taken aback is short of an understatement, but Signas cannot recall X ever having committed any act deserving of a private apology within recent missions. Perhaps this is yet another notch along X’s humanity, her need to correct insipid mistakes that are naught to the victims of her acts or her words. 

At the probable befuddlement along her Commander’s features, X presses on, voice interlaced with gentle sympathy, “I have been… very cold to you. I have pushed so many people away because Zero trusted them with this far more than me. I think I was jealous and hurt because he was my best friend, but now… 

“But, I know now that he trusted me to find a way to stop these endless wars. I don’t see how I could have even gotten this far without--.” 

A pause, then a breath to steel frayed nerves, then X takes her hand so suddenly that cognition is now light-years behind reality.

Signas' hand is massive in the trembling grasp of X’s own, but the smaller android holds it close as though to do so floods buoyant relief through the Blue Bomber’s systems. A short circuit, callous and grating, fritzes Signas’ cognitive processors into a buzzing pause which only turns more corrosive when there is a smile so tender and thankful given so freely to her. 

“But, every time I turned in a request to work with the scientists here, you never denied me— you never reprimanded me or anything for more or less removing myself from the frontlines again. Why?” 

The long answer is that though the moon rises high in her silver cradle, Signas would loop a rope around it and tug it right down to the ground if X only asked. To see those eyes aglow with satisfaction that her every whim be met would bring more joy to the large reploid than ever imagined. She need nothing in return, no phrases of affection, no kisses of gratitude; she need only X’s happiness, nothing more. 

The short answer is that, in Signas' humble thoughts, the Mother of All has hung the stars and the moons and the suns along each precipice of the universe. Nothing short of X’s wants being met is acceptable. 

But love is war all the same, and her heart is a knight on the board that she refuses to risk, thus, a white lie tramples its hooves on the remnants of a bitter truth—“this project was too important for the future stability of man and reploid kind.” 

Good enough. It is better to warp and meld this truth into a more purposeful rallying cry than for it to stay this festering selfish adoration. 

However, X’s eyes are regarding her with something too barren, her endless gaze ever so open and fragile. Something acidic then eats at the softness beheld in that look, and X exhales. “I don’t believe you, ma’am.” 

“I gain nothing by lying to you,” Signas visibly flinches and she damns her own failing self preservation with a sharpness in her tone that hopefully conveys her newfound truth, “our livelihood depends on your successes here.” 

“You… weren’t so sure about it back then,” X counters, fingers tense as they have yet to drop Signas’ hand. Scraps of memory upturn as a grim recollection of X pulling herself from the frontlines entirely, a move that skittered unease down Signas’ programming as losing one of her best on the field felt like a failure on her own part. The whole of it was just a reckless conundrum, Zero even showing his own concerns with his partner’s decision with increased collateral damage before returning from a mission with a scoundrel of a reploid that changed so much of the atmosphere of Headquarters. 

Signas feels the tendrils of mourning wrap at her throat as Axl's blinding grin and cocky laugh invade her memory banks. There is not one day that has passed that the entire hoard of veteran Hunters glance over to his chair at least once in a hollow hope that he would reappear before their eyes, and Signas feels the weight of him even more then. 

Axl’s loss has left an abysmally cold void in every nook and cranny of this towering behemoth of wrought steel and robotic perseverance, and X has yet to speak of him since she had to be the one to retire him herself. 

“Perhaps circumstances are different—.”

“Those circumstances are worse, Signas! If anything, I’m needed more than ever!” 

And in spite of her desperate shouts, X abruptly falls into a fit of giggles, her head rolling slowly as though to stave off the sound emitting from her own vocals. It nearly breaks the commanding officer, nearly leaves her in shambles save for her stoic expression that makes her so resilient. 

She waits, ever patient, ever kind, ever the shield she longs to be, and she risks it all by taking X’s hands instead. 

X yields for a brief second, her verdant gaze staring at their joined hands as though secrets that would guide her to truths unbound would be given freely. She is soft and pliable, vulnerable and trembling, a sight Signas knows comes with a steep price. 

“I have never once doubted you, X. There are times when I have worried you would overextend yourself, and you have done that more times than not. Yes,” Signas relents with a droop of her proud shoulders, “these times are when we Hunters are seemingly at our most broken, but circumstances be damned this time. You found something, didn’t you? Was it all worth it?” 

If there were ever something more than respect found in those eyes, the commanding unit finds it then, troubling herself with fantastical assumptions while she stays steadfast. Those lush greens hold such fathomless ache and tenderness that perhaps it would break any reploid’s heart to seem, but then—X smiles, gloriously golden like sunshine spilling over the valleys and it is all towards her, not the man sleeping away in his makeshift grave. 

Signas falls in love all over again. 

“We made an antivirus with Zero’s antibodies that has a success rate of one-hundred-percent.” 

Signas restarts, shocked to her very joints because that is definitely not what her aural cones expected to hear. At all. 

“Yes, you did hear that right,” X soothes in a light tease, “and she would like to meet you.” 

‘She?’ 

Signas’ mind whirs quick and short, bursting through all the probabilities that lie before her in this untold meeting of what—no, who—would potentially become one of the greatest salvations of reploidkind. A cyberelf, the most splendorous of her kind with glistening data trails and a gentle ring in her static voice, appropriately designated as Mother Elf. She glows as resplendent as the Mother of All once did, a warmth to her that beguiles Signas into believing in that fickle maiden called hope again. 

And believes she does, impulsively and intimately does, even as she keeps X’s hand in her own.

Yet, for years to come as they have passed, X is forever a pious relic, held to the heavens on a gossamer throne gilded with diamonds that present her in sanctimonious affliction. Signas, however, knows this azure seraph of justice is instead just as broken and as weak as the rest of them, yet it will come all to fruition one unknown day. On that day, truly, the sickening scream of metal warping and burning will fill their senses and fires will kill and cleanse as a beast shall arise from his slumber and take on a demonic messiah's visage. Fleeing will be the most useless of plans as everything that was built by the hands of robot and human alike will be utterly decimated under a unholy onslaught. 

And, before the flatline, Signas will find the one door that she can get open with her hands alone while X begs for this beast to recall her name, to recall her face, but it will all be for naught as a tempest of war drums and his sinister sneers will ever be the answer. A last act as Commander will be to take X's arm and throw her down the corridor to an emergency exit before Judgment's hand crushes her, and frantic, begging verdant eyes are all she sees before static then black. 


End file.
